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“Trying to find a funding source to repair the nation’s infrastructure is still a big goal of mine. And the president talked about infrastructure, but he didn’t talk about how to pay for it,” Boehner told reporters Thursday morning. “It’s easy to go out there and be Santa Claus and talk about all these things you want to give away, but at some point, somebody’s got to pay the bill.”

The president used his State of the Union address to again call for more investment in infrastructure, a $40 billion Fix-It-First” program and a “Partnership to Rebuild America” — proposals with few details yet and no clear mechanism for funding those plans.

In the past, Obama has endorsed using savings from winding the down the military operations overseas — the “peace dividend” — to revamp the county’s roads, rails and ports. That idea has been derided as a budgetary gimmick by Republicans, and the president, along with Congress, has yet to seek an increase in the gas tax or any other fee that infrastructure desperately needs.

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly described recent comments from Boehner.